The present invention relates generally to a system for drug and health care supply distribution and replenishment, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a system for drug information transfer, drug inventory management, and drug packaging, resulting in a unique system of drug distribution and replenishment.
It has been known for health care providers, such as hospitals, to have a pharmacist or pharmacy department within the hospital coordinate the dispensing of drugs to the patients of the health care institution. The pharmacists in such health care institutions have long been burdened with the increasingly complex record keeping and inventory management that results from hospitals caring for hundreds, if not thousands, of patients every day. Various methods have been employed to assist a hospital's pharmacist or pharmacy department with maintaining accurate records while attempting to reduce the burden of managing all of the information associated with drug distribution. The pharmacist's responsibility has included: filling individual patient prescriptions on a daily basis; maintaining sufficient inventory of each drug in order to have enough quantities of the drug in hospital stock to administer to patients on a daily basis; tracking of drug interactions to prevent a patient from being given a drug that has adverse affects when combined with other drugs; accounting for the purchase of drugs for use in the hospital; accounting associated with the giving of drugs to individual patients; distributing the drugs to the appropriate nursing stations within the hospital to suit each station's daily demands; tracking of drug expiration dates to rid inventories of expired drugs; and tracking of drug lot numbers, for example, in the event of a recall of a particular drug or drug lot number.
In recent years, hospitals have been assisted with drug distribution management by the introduction of drug dispensing machines, such as the machines described in some of Applicant's other patents, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,875, entitled "Medication Dispenser Station" and U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,294, entitled "Single Dose Pharmaceutical Dispenser Subassembly." Drug dispensing machines and health care supply dispensing machines have effectively created branches of the hospital pharmacy department at each nursing station where the dispensing machines are located. The dispensing machines are frequently arranged to be electronically connected to a central computer system within the pharmacy department for tracking drugs that were to be administered to patients in that particular patient care area of the hospital. In this manner, hospitals have improved the manner in which drugs are dispensed to patients and the record keeping required by the pharmacy department has been simplified somewhat by each patient care area electronically reporting the variety and quantities of drugs dispensed from each drug dispensing machine. Supply dispensing machines may also be able to electronically report the variety and quantities of supplies dispensed.
Health care providers, such as hospitals, have traditionally purchased drugs from drug distributors in bulk quantities (e.g., 100 single dose units of a particular variety of drug). Health care supplies may be purchased in a similar fashion and the scope of the present invention is meant to include health care supplies, as well as drugs. Although drugs will be discussed in more detail herein, this should not be interpreted to limit the broad scope of the present invention, which also includes supplies. While hospitals have purchased drugs in bulk due to manufacturer availability and being offered by the drug distributor, drugs are nevertheless dispensed at the health care institution on a patient-by-patient basis in low dose quantities. Therefore, hospitals have had to purchase and maintain large quantities of drugs until the drugs were eventually dispensed to the patients. Inventory turnover of drugs is usually measured in days, weeks or more. During such time, the hospitals have had to incur the associated expense of carrying this large inventory of drugs. Frequently, the result has been independent management of such large quantities, including unexplained loss of portions of the drugs in inventory, and even theft of portions of the inventory. In addition, the pharmacy department of the hospital has had the extra burden of tracking the drugs dispensed for patient use, as well as tracking the drugs that the pharmacy is carrying in its inventory. These issues also apply to health care supplies in health care institutions.
As the automated medication dispensing industry has matured, state regulatory agencies are beginning to address new technologies in the field and want assurance that an item in a pocket in a drug or medication dispensing machine is exactly what the machine represents it to be. Users of these drug dispensing machines also desire improvements in the refill and load procedures to make them more efficient.
The present invention is designed to overcome several of the above mentioned problems associated with health care provider drug and supply distribution. The present invention includes a unique form of drug packaging in combination with a computerized drug management software system. Low unit of measure quantities of a drug are packaged in an enclosure or package, such as a sealed plastic bag or a box, and the package is preferably marked with a lot number and a related lot number bar code for tracking the lot from which the drugs within that particular package originated. The package may also include an expiration date and related expiration date bar code for tracking the expiration date of the drugs within the package. The package may also include an NDC number and related NDC (Motional Drug Code) number bar code for identifying the variety of drug packaged within the enclosure. The package and bar code on the package may also include further information regarding its contents.
Once the drugs are packaged, they may be warehoused at a drug distribution center. When a health care provider requires drugs, the drug distribution center delivers the low unit measure packages in accordance with the hospital's current needs. Once the low unit measure packages arrive at the hospital, the bar codes may be scanned by the hospital pharmacy and/or scanned at the appropriate drug dispensing machine in the hospital to be automatically logged into the hospital's drug information management system in electronic communication with the drug distributor's management information system to track exactly what drugs and quantities arrived at the hospital in each shipment. Furthermore, the bar codes on the packages may be used to track the drugs that are placed in each drug dispensing machine at each patient care area within the hospital. The hospital's drug management information system will thus contain information about the items placed in each drug dispensing machine in the hospital, including drug type, lot numbers, expiration dates, and the like.
The present invention incorporates new features and components to improve existing automated drug and supply dispensing systems as well as potentially change existing operations in the pharmacy. The bar coded packages are designed to work with the latest machines and systems going to the field and might be used for legacy machines and systems currently in the field. One goal of the present invention is to standardize the machine replenishment procedure of items (drugs, supplies, etc.) so that the process of putting away items in a machine is the same regardless of whether the items came from the in-house pharmacy or from a distributor outside of the hospital.
In addition, the present invention provides a computerized electronic interface between the hospital software system that tracks the drug distribution within the hospital and the drug distributor's software system at the drug distribution center warehouse. By enabling these two systems to communicate with each other, the system of the present invention provides a complete drug distribution management system from the warehouse to the patient care area within the hospital.
The system of the present invention is for drug and health care supply distribution and replenishment. The present invention includes a package containing at least one drug and the package has information thereon relative to the drug. This information is preferably in bar code form. It has a computer at a health care provider and the computer is adapted for storing said drug information and maintaining drug counts. There is one or more automated drug dispensing machines at a location at the health care provider and the automated drug dispensing machines are in electronic communication with the computer. The present invention also includes one or more drug information collection units (preferably hand held units) that are adapted to obtain drug information from the package by scanning the bar code and the drug information collection units are adapted to communicate the drug information to the computer. The system of the present invention, including the computer, the automated drug dispensing machines, and the drug information collection units, records drugs received by the health care provider, records drugs dispensed to patients at the health care provider, and records an ongoing inventory of drugs stored at the health care provider.
The present invention may also include a second computer located at a drug supplier facility, with the second computer in electronic communication with the first computer, and the second computer being adapted to receive an electronic purchase order from the first computer. The system of the present invention preferably includes an electronic interface, such as an interface computer, between the first computer and the second computer to enable the first computer and the second computer to electronically communicate and share data with each other.
Various objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description when viewed in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, which set forth certain embodiments of the invention.